wrong abbreviation in pidgin.pot: "%.2f KB/s"

[yslandro]

In translating from pidgin.pot I found the string "%.2f KB/s". There is one error at least, but maybe even two:

1) capital K refers to Kelvin, should be "k" for kilo 2) can someone confirm that capital B is correct? B = Byte, b = bit. Normally bytes are used when describing storage, and bits are used for speed description.

So the resulting string should become either

a) "%.2f kB/s" = kilobytes per second, or b) "%.2f kb/s" = kilobits per second

[acli]

kB is correct. The source refers to bytes sent/remaining divided by 1024; it does not refer to bits.

[rlaager]

If we're going to "fix" this, we should use KiB/s, which is what is technically correct.

I submitted a patch to do this (fix all these units) as one of the first things I wrote for Gaim and it was rejected with the logic that people don't know what KiB means. If we still believe that, then KB/s is fine.

By all of my experience, KB is used interchangably with kB in the computer world. At least one other person, agrees ;), as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix says, "The one-letter symbols are identical to SI prefixes, except for "K", which is used interchangeably with "k" (in SI, the upper-case or capital "K" stands for kelvin, and only the lower-case "k" represents 1,000)."

[yslandro]

If KiB/s is technically correct, then we should use it. If we can educate people as well - great! As for the erroneous use of k and K, we should stick to what is correct. What's the purpose of standards if we don't apply them?

[rlaager]

You're ignoring the fact that these things have been used "incorrectly" for something like three or four decades now. That's a lot of intertia to overcome. That said, I'm all for doing it correctly, but others disagree.

[yslandro]

I'm not ignoring the incorrect usage, I just feel that the correct path is the way to go. :-)

[shreevatsa]

FWIW, *many* apps use the standard binary prefixes (KiB, MiB) etc. these days, including most of the usual GNOME apps (nautilus, system monitor etc.) (And um, also Azureus, gtk-gnutella). They are getting more and more common all the time (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#Adoption ). IMHO the inertia has been overcome and there is enough momentum now to move to the standard prefixes.

[rlaager]

Luke, what's your take on this? I can dig up that patch and audit the prefixes in not too much time if we want to switch. I'd like to, personally.

[lschiere]

I probably assigned this to myself to not forget to look at it since it has a string change.

I honestly only heard of "KiB" and similar for the first time a few days ago (not counting this ticket) when I saw them in a debian planet post. So I'm tempted to say that adoption of this notation is signfiicantly *less* universal than we are being lead to believe.

That being said, the arguments for using it are rather persuasive, and I agree (with the debian person whose blog I was reading) that those who don't know what "KiB" means proably also get confused about when we are using base 10 and when base 2. So I'd say go for it.

[kstange]

I think, in the worst case, people will wonder what it is and google it. In the long run, the more usage these terms get, the better educated people will become about them by necessity. :)

[rlaager@…]

(In [c6d8bd5928a9e1ad839a8430194d3479dc4df0a8]) Use the IEC binary units to match our math.

Fixes #1684

[number1pbefan]

good thing I looked here first. I was wondering why in transfers it said KiB and not KB. I guess there's nothing I can do to get it back to KB...